Posts Tagged ‘Shiver Games’

The Devil might have all the best tunes but his latest game is a stinker. The original Lucius looked like it’d be a sandbox Satanic murder ‘em up but turned out to be something closer to a shonky 3d point and click game, with prescripted kills that required specific inputs, objects and (sometimes) timing. For the sequel [official site], developers Shiver Games have built a game of improvised murder and AI interactions, but in reaching for the stars, they’ve fallen shrieking into the sun.

If you, like me, are a bit oblivious, you probably didn’t notice that Friday and Saturday were very important days. You may also, like me, now be trying to quickly squeeze both Friday the 13th and Valentine’s Day into one single celebration of love and fear. I’ve been snogging my own hand underneath a ladder, making quite clear that I’m only doing it because I feel obliged to, and have been feeding expensive chocolates to neighbourhood black cats.

I suppose you could also catch up on Ole Spooky Friday by playing minisatan simulator Lucius II [official site], as it launched on that dire day.

Have You Played? is an endless stream of game recommendations. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.

The Omen: The Game. Antichrist simulator. Hitman: Blood Magic. From the outside, Lucius [official site] looks like a sandbox of Satanic slaughter, in which you play the spawn of the devil in the form of a young boy who has a permanent sulkface. Tasked with killing the staff and residents of a large, bland mansion, the game allows you to indulge in patricide, matricide and priesticide, which is, I suppose, another form of patricide. However, as is the case with the titular character, the game isn’t what it seems to be*.

Halloween. Scareday, they call it. The dream release date of every horror game is October 31st, the one they call The Big Spooker, Boosday, or Satan’s Flatwarming. If that’s too far away, though, developers can always fall back on Friday the 13th. We’ve got three of ‘em this year, and Lucius II: The Prophecy [official site] is looking to make 2015’s first ᴅᴇᴠɪʟɪsʜ. Shiver Games have announced they’ll release the sandbox Young Satan simulator on Friday, February the 13th, and I must say I’m pretty keen to have a crack.

The idea of Lucius sounded jolly good fun, an Omen ‘em up about the son of the Satan offing his family and servants. But as our Jim noted in his review, in reality it was more an adventure game where the puzzles to solve happened to be people to murder. You might, for example, break a lawnmower so you can mind-control the gardener into jamming his head into its spinning blades.

Lucius II, announced today, seems far more keen on Satantic murder. Developers Shiver Games describe it as a “3D splatter adventure sandbox” about terrorising a hospital and a small town. The trailer sure has a lot of splatter, with heads popping off and fires fires fires.

Lucius arrives on the 26th of October, just in time to be played as you close the curtains and ignore trick or treaters on Halloween. It’s a 3D adventure inspired by horror classic The Omen, and it’s been developed by three-man Helsinki-based, Shiver Games. But are spines chilled? Are hairs raised? Most importantly: are brains teased? Having played an early copy of the game I feel obliged to tell you Wot I Think.

The Ladies & Gentlemen aboard the VG247 newsblimp have beamed up another interesting minor announcement, which is that Shiver Games’ spooky Omen-like horror game Lucius, in which you play a demon-child offing people in a country house, is to arrive in October. It’s an open world thing, which gives you the run of the house, allowing you some invention in how you kill off characters before your journey to hell. Looks both worrying and intriguing.

There have been all sorts of horror games over the years, including plenty that made no sense at all, but never have I seen one that lets you play as the archetypal “creepy child” from various works of horror fiction. An oversight, perhaps. It’s all to change come “Q4 2011″, however, as Lucius sees you playing as the son of the devil, given the task to kill all the residents of a mansion without letting anyone guess that you are responsible. Interesting concept right? From the looks of things it’s taking a leaf or two out of Agent 47’s notebook, and has nods to The Exorcist and The Shining in this sinister trailer from Gamescom:Read the rest of this entry »